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Millions In US Still Living Life In Internet Slow Lane (arstechnica.com) 209

Posted by BeauHD from the loading-bar dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Millions of Americans still have extremely slow Internet speeds, a new Federal Communications Commission report shows. While the FCC defines broadband as download speeds of 25Mbps, about 47.5 million home or business Internet connections provided speeds below that threshold. Out of 102.2 million residential and business Internet connections, 22.4 million offered download speeds less than 10Mbps, with 5.8 million of those offering less than 3Mbps. About 25.1 million connections offered at least 10Mbps but less than 25Mbps. 54.7 million households had speeds of at least 25Mbps, with 15.4 million of those at 100Mbps or higher. These are the advertised speeds, not the actual speeds consumers receive. Some customers will end up with slower speeds than what they pay for. Upload speeds are poor for many Americans as well. While the FCC uses 3Mbps as the upload broadband standard, 16 million households had packages with upload speeds less than 1Mbps. Another 27.2 million connections were between 1Mbps and 3Mbps, 30.1 million connections were between 3Mbps and 6Mbps, while 29 million were at least 6Mbps. The Internet Access Services report released last week contains data as of December 31, 2015. The 11-month gap is typical for these reports, which are based on information collected from Internet service providers. The latest data is nearly a year old, so things might look a bit better now, just as the December 2015 numbers are a little better than previous ones.
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Millions In US Still Living Life In Internet Slow Lane More

Millions In US Still Living Life In Internet Slow Lane

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  • Slow lane, eh? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Try looking at what we're getting up north.

    That's Canada, for the geographically-impaired.

  • between 3 and 10 Mb/s is slow? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 05, 2016 @05:29PM (#53427823)

    It's fine. Not long ago I had a connection of 7Mb/sec, and I really had no issues doing normal browsing, streaming netflix, etc. I've streamed Netflix as low as a 1Mb/sec connection (which honestly was fairly bad whenever you needed to download anything over a couple hundred megabytes).

    These days I have a 40 megabit connection, and it's great. But I'm quite certain I could easily live with a 10 megabit connection. The vast majority of people really don't need anything beyond say 5-10 megabit, which easily allows you to stream HD movies. It wasn't really that long ago that "slow" was considered perhaps 1 megabit or below.

    • Re:between 3 and 10 Mb/s is slow? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @05:39PM (#53427887) Homepage Journal

      You obviously don't live in a house with multiple people. Between my Mother-in-law streaming Hulu, my kids gaming while playing Youtube videos, my wife facetiming with the grandkid, and me on a VOIP call with work and 3-5 meg internet connection would be unbearable.

      • What I don't understand is why a DOCSIS modem can't split say a 3.5mb line up into 3 separate 1mb lines. This would make sharing a line much better...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Lehk228 ( 705449 )
          that isn't the modems job, it's the router's job, but the little routers that you buy for a house don't have that feature, big $1000+ routers can do that easily, but not the ones built off surplus main boards for last years mobile phones.
          • I recently purchased a budget router, with my only purchasing filter being support of an open source firmware if I so chose to install it.

            The budget router, a TP-LINK TL-WR940N, has the capability to limit the bandwidth use of any connected MAC address.

            So you are wrong, or lying, and in either case pretending.

    • It really wasn't that long ago that "slow" was considered 56k or below.

      It really wasn't that long ago that "slow" was considered 4800 or below.

      It really wasn't that long ago that "slow" was considered a telegraph.

      It really wasn't that long ago that "slow" was considered letter carrier on horseback.

      It really wasn't that long ago that "slow" was considered a guy running 26.2 miles.

      Welcome to progress, you may be happy with 10 Mbps but I'd like to move on.

  • Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Digicrat ( 973598 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @05:31PM (#53427839)

    A better question is what percentage of customers have slower speeds because they have no viable alternatives, versus how many (ie: my Mom) are still on relatively ancient DSL (or other) services that haven't quite kept up with the times.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by galabar ( 518411 )
      Or those that we only interested in the cheapest option...

    • I do have alternatives - at much higher cost and with data caps. No thanks, I'll keep my uncapped DSL line.

      • Same here. I pay $65/month for 12 Mbps (uncapped), 5 static IPs, and decent IPv6 support (now, anyway) through AT&T. They're not my favorite company in the world by any stretch, and the service hasn't been the best, but that's *far* less than what Comcast wants for something comparable, plus Comcast wants a $300 install fee for a business line, which is the only way they'll offer static IPs. Then on top of that they require $7.00/month or so for the modem rental, because they won't provision the sta

    • I live about 6 miles from an urban area that has fibre, cable and DSL. My only choice is HughesNet Satellite (10 GB data cap/month) or a pretty slow (1 Mb/sec) wireless link.

      No DSL (too far from a C.O.), no cable.

      Both of the above choices are rather limited (the 1Mb link failed for about 6 hours this AM) there is no other choice.

      I pay a little over $100/month for both services. I need two providers because both are unreliable.

      The reason we don't have cable is because the area is semi-rural and the distanc

      • I live about 6 miles from an urban area that has fibre, cable and DSL. My only choice is HughesNet Satellite (10 GB data cap/month) or a pretty slow (1 Mb/sec) wireless link.

        No DSL (too far from a C.O.), no cable.

        Both of the above choices are rather limited (the 1Mb link failed for about 6 hours this AM) there is no other choice.

        I pay a little over $100/month for both services. I need two providers because both are unreliable.

        The reason we don't have cable is because the area is semi-rural and the distance between homes is about 1/8 to 1/4 mile.

        Don't take it personally, but this is why I no longer want to live away from an urban area. I used to, I even had concrete plans to move to a rural area and settle there with wife and kids. But as technology would have it, internet service has become a real necessity.

        And this country has a shit of an attitude about providing ubiquitous good internet infrastructure. Japan on the other hand, it has a different approach. They are throwing good internet infrastructure everywhere in rural areas (to get young

    • A better question is what percentage of customers have slower speeds because they have no viable alternatives, versus how many (ie: my Mom) are still on relatively ancient DSL (or other) services that haven't quite kept up with the times.

      Or how many stay on DSL or slower connections because it meets their needs, so they have no reason to change even if there are options.

    • The real story is the ripoff of American's who were promised fiber upgrades to old infrastructure which never materialized. The providers did a bait-and-switch and only upgraded certain backbone lines with fiber, but leaving the critical -to-home endpoints with the outdated copper. My d/l speeds are far less than 1Mbps over DSL and upload is appalling. My ISP will allow me to use a second copper wire for double the price which is an absolute rirpoff.

      For people who believed that all of our old copper line

  • The thing they always gloss over in these "the Internetz is SLOW!" articles is where the slow internet is.

    "there are still many parts of the country where slow DSL or satellite is sadly the best option"

    Yeah, like way out in the boonies, where a lot of people move to get away from the "fast lane." That's where a bunch of the slow satellite connections are.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dzimas ( 547818 )

      Uh, no. Satellite or terrestrial LTE is a painful necessity for many of us who live just outside major cities. My girlfriend and I are both in IT and would dearly love fast internet.

    • What you consider the 'boonies' may not really be that far from what you consider 'not the boonies'.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Altrag ( 195300 )

      I suppose it depends what you consider "the boonies," but if we take those numbers at face value we have:

      ~6% says that US urban population is ~81%. So we've got a 30% gap there even if we assume every rural person everywhere is stuck with slow internet due to purely geographic issues.

      They may not have specified the percentage of urban vs rural people they checked up on, but the numbers suggest it doesn't really matter because even in the best case scenario, things still stink with regards to internet spee

    • There are cities that are bad also. People say "Just get LTE!" but that's expensive and difficult to use for computers. And in many places your decent enough to be usable internet may be restricted to a single overpriced most hated company in America supplier.

  • infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)

    by k6mfw ( 1182893 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @05:44PM (#53427929)
    it's crap, many don't understand you need good infrastructure for a functioning modern society. But oh no, that would require more evil gubbermint to do all that. Leave it to private companies (yay capitalism), yeah sure and look what we got for internet. Yes, I bitchy today. What really gripes me is telco companies lobby legislation preventing cities and towns set up their own high speed internet (essential for businesses)

    • Re:infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SlaveToTheGrind ( 546262 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @06:23PM (#53428227)

      But oh no, that would require more evil gubbermint to do all that. Leave it to private companies (yay capitalism), yeah sure and look what we got for internet.

      Baloney. The limited poor choices we have for broadband access today are generally driven by government-protected monopolies -- the exact opposite of free-market competition.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Current state of ISPs in the US is a pretty good example of government-granted service monopolies acting like typical monopolies. Actual capitalistic competition would be a vast improvement.

        FTFY

        Strat

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dave420 ( 699308 )

          The US does have ridiculous regulations, but it's not their magnitude but their direction which is bad. Don't equate all government regulations as equal when clearly they can vary massively depending on the government which introduced them. The fact there are many European countries with telecoms regulated incredibly strongly, and yet with well-priced ISPs. Clearly your point needs some work.

    • it's crap, many don't understand you need good infrastructure for a functioning modern society. But oh no, that would require more evil gubbermint to do all that.

      Actually, it just requires them to carry through on that. Personally, I just want them to go get back the money we gave the telcos to build out DSL. They spent it on executive bonuses instead. I want that money back.

  • Making America Great! No More American's in the "Internet Slow Lane"!*

    * - Pesky FCC demanding 25Mbps. We'll make it so 1Mbps is fast, thus everyone with 1Mbps or better is in the "fast lane"! #FIrst100Days

    (Yes, this post is sarcasm, and completely made up)

  • My dad could care less about the internet and doesn't see the value in it. Only reason he has it is so he can check his work email and keep his wife happy. He thinks the idea of having it be a regulated utility is stupid and unnecessary as people don't need the internet. He's 63 years old. I doubt he's the only person that thinks like this.

    • Re:Some folks might not even care (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Altrag ( 195300 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @07:02PM (#53428537)

      Tell him to stop using it for a month and see what life is like when his work is pissed and his wife isn't happy.

      Its not "necessary" in the same way that electricity isn't "necessary," but that's only relevant if you want to live like its 1800 again.

      Cars and medicine and flushing toilets aren't "necessary" either but nobody really wants to live like it was the dark ages again either.

      The only thing that's strictly "necessary" is for a sufficient number of people to survive to breeding age and pass their genes on to the next generation -- and that's only if you think its necessary for the species as a whole to continue. Everything beyond that is comfort.

      • My mom gets by just fine without the internet. Which means, she's always asking me to order stuff for her, or set up an email so she can get some discount. :p

  • Meanwhile, in Australia..........waits for comments about the dismal speeds us Australians face!
  • Where do they get this seemingly arbitrary figure of 25Mb/s, anyway?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      It's not arbitrary Netflix recommends at least 25Mb/s for Ultra HD.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      I am a geek and a somewhat heavy computer user/downloader (streaming video on YouTube and elsewhere, large file downloads etc etc etc) and even I dont need 25Mb/s to be happy.

      The real problem in the US are people stuck with dialup (unusable on today's internet), wireless (slow as hell and very high latency), slow ADSL (ADSL2+ speeds are great if you can get them but many people in the US can only get 1.5Mbps ADSL1 if they are lucky) or slow shared bandwidth options (like cable where the cable companies put

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Because too many Americans had connections faster than the previous 10 Mbit/sec figure... They needed to re-define the "minimum" to give the FCC an excuse to complain about US consumer's slow internet connections.

  • I know the point of this is that there is a significant cost to not having reliable high speed access. However some of us remember the days when your computer connected by a modem at 300 baud and that was pretty good. I recently found myself trying to explain a modem to a high school student... that is one exercise guaranteed to make you feel old. I could have just as well given up and said we sent everything by certified pterodactyl.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sims 2 ( 994794 )

      To which the reply would be COOL you had pterodactyls?! Or yeah yeah (crazy old man).

      I ended up with a POTS simulator so I could run fax machines or connect computers together via modem for old times sake since I haven't had a home phone line in years.

  • The slowest speeds listed in this report are far better than what HUGE swaths are of U.S. are relegated to: dial up.

    Broadband rollout is so poor in the U.S., due mostly to corrupt relationships between providers and lawmakers, that most of the country's geography is not served by anything better than dialup or satellite, both of which are horrible.

    • yes my brother in Florida lives in nice subdivision with house less than ten years old, but connects with juno dial-up for $14 a month. Compare that with my mother-in-law in Cambodia where in 1998 they were laying down fiber around her neighborhood, they went from dialup to megabits/sec overnight.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        yes my brother in Florida lives in nice subdivision with house less than ten years old, but connects with juno dial-up for $14 a month. Compare that with my mother-in-law in Cambodia where in 1998 they were laying down fiber around her neighborhood, they went from dialup to megabits/sec overnight.

        Residential fiber in 1998? In Cambodia? I call bullshit. Here in Norway the first delivery of Internet over cable TV was 1998, ADSL in 2000, I see our first FTTH company was started in 2001 but that was in a very small area where they were rolling out lots of fiber for the oil industry anyway and was rare as unicorns and super expensive even for a first world country. It was only in the recovery after the dot-bust in the mid 2000s it saw any real traction.

        • Did not mean to imply the fiber was going directly to the homes, but it was being laid for telco data distribution. I have pictures

  • Kids these days. With dial up the struggle was real.

  • Just got google fiber installed today woohoo!

  • Rural areas still only have dialup (Score:3)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @08:06PM (#53428933) Journal

    Here in washington state, many rural areas only have dialup, because they don't have the money to run high speed microwave to the small towns. Some islands on the west coast have many retired millionaires, so they have high speed due to point to point microwave.

    The small town my family is in, has a small point to point microwave, that Verzion and comcast rents off a small ISP, so they can bring in service. 80 homes have comcast, but only the town library has a 5meg wifi for the town. People drive up just to check mail. Verizon coverage is helpful, but gsm has no coverage.

    They don't sell sat internet in Washington state due to over subscribing. Everyone waiting for the new viasat 2 to launch (already delayed) till Q1 2017, and viasat 3, so rural areas in the US can get high speed (but limited) internet.

    • Here in washington state, many rural areas only have dialup, because they don't have the money to run high speed microwave to the small towns.

      I live in the sticks and we had a local WISP that bounced the signal in from the next county from mountaintop to mountaintop, about two links. They got bought out and the large WISP I use now does it with four hops across mountaintops. Literally the only fiber into my county is owned by ATT and it is actually cheaper to buy access from a reseller, but then you have to deal with them and they are all shit at service. AT&T is, as always, the fucking problem. Ma Bell got the ill communication.

    • #define rural.

      I live in a small town in Illinois surrounded by corn and soybeans.... you can get a 150/10 internet connection here from the local cable company which they charge a premium price for. I currently have the 50/5 which is more like 55/10...it is fairly priced.

      The situation here is such that one of the sat TV providers has a bundle that uses the cable company for Internet. Because while the cable company's internet/phone services are of reasonably good value...their TV services aren't so much.

  • 5.8 million of those offering less than 3Mbps: So? (Score:4)

    by farble1670 ( 803356 ) on Monday December 05, 2016 @08:28PM (#53429049)

    5.8 million of those offering less than 3Mbps

    Is that surprising in a country of ~4 million square miles that ~2% of the population has to deal with 3Mbps? Sounds pretty darn reasonable to me.

  • Everyone likes to champion the speeds in Japan, South Korea, Europe, England etc, compared to the USA. Granted, the ISP's in the USA aren't what you would call consumer friendly by any means, but, look at the build out costs associated with running FTTH in the USA? Hell, you can fit the entire countries of Japan, South Korea, England and Europe INSIDE the land area of the USA. Just Texas for example. You have two cars parked at the North Texas/South Oklahoma border. One Driving north, the other south. T

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dave420 ( 699308 )

      Then why does internet access suck so badly in many large cities? Your argument doesn't hold water. Just look at Europe - larger than the US and still doing better. Clearly there is something more to it than just size or density...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      Finland's population density is less than that of the United States.

      Why can't each of the several states, which is about the size of one European country, manage to deploy of high-speed Internet within that state?

      • Finland's population density is less than that of the United States.

        Why can't each of the several states, which is about the size of one European country, manage to deploy of high-speed Internet within that state?

        They could easily if they just realized what is a free market and what is not. Infrastructure is almost always a shit choice to let a private operator both build and operate. Since it cannot be moved, and it is too expensive to build multiple copies of that infrastructure, you get maybe one or two providers per area. That's a monopoly.

        Do like we do in Sweden instead. Let the government pay for the infrastructure, through a non-profit company that lays down optic fibers to all homes. Then let private ISP'

  • While the FCC defines broadband as download speeds of 25Mbps, about 47.5 million home or business Internet connections provided speeds below that threshold. Out of 102.2 million residential and business Internet connections, 22.4 million offered download speeds less than 10Mbps, with 5.8 million of those offering less than 3Mbps. About 25.1 million connections offered at least 10Mbps but less than 25Mbps. 54.7 million households had speeds of at least 25Mbps, with 15.4 million of those at 100Mbps or higher

  • I choose 6 Mbps because it's the cheapest plan and I don't care about high definition.

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